


Silent Night

by IShipThem



Category: Sister Claire (Webcomic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipThem/pseuds/IShipThem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire mourns for the child she never had</p><p>Trigger Warnings: miscarriage, grieving, depression</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Night

The baby never existed.

Claire thinks about that, late, late at night. Not before she thinks of everything else. She thinks about Clementine, the echoes of a dead girl that clamber and ricochet inside of her, like pippin’ hot rubber balls; pieces of her that now Claire thinks were never hers at all. A drawing of a tree stretching up so far it hid the horizon. A magpie speaking like a person. Witch hair.

Catherine’s smile.

She thinks of the twin’s faces, and of Marie going pale and Rosie stuttering, and she thinks of Lupo and all the stories he’s told her he’s heard, and she thinks about her Sisters, way back in the abbey, and the books that fill their shelves with their awful, awful pictures.

Claire tosses and turns. She can hear the horns, those new bits of her that aren’t hers, buzzing and hissing, all night long. There’s warm bodies all around her. Cats that aren’t cats, a horned tiger that hasn’t left her side for weeks now, and yet. And yet Claire feels cold and the horns feel hot and all of this isn’t her, isn’t her, had never been her.

Claire gnaws and bites and munches all of it to the quick, and even that isn’t hers, not really. Cause she’s never really bitten her fingernails, and still—

But after all of that.

Like a child sitting just off your vision, waiting for you to notice them, after all of that—

The baby never even existed.

Claire remembers that, each time. She forgets, or almost does, and then she remembers. Deep into the night. After everything else, Claire remembers that.

She feels stupid about this, because you can’t mourn someone that isn’t dead. She had never  _wanted_  to be a mother before, had she, now? Hadn’t she been terrified of it all? There had never  _been_  a child in the first place, so Claire has not lost anything, not really.

Never mind that sometimes the cats’ soft padding starts sounding like tiny feet.

The baby never existed.

But Claire’s fingers still start twitching, half-formed plans for jumpers and socks and itty-bitty coats making them jump before she remembers. She still makes as if to reach for her belly before sitting down. She woobles, her gravity center all wrong. All wrong, all wrong.

Catharine notices, and each time it looks like she swallowed a nail. For Claire, it’s like a whole hammer. She’s never gonna put a squirming kind in Catharine’s arms. She’s never gonna be up in the middle of the night, sleep-deprived, wondering what could possibly be wrong anymore, and Catharine isn’t ever gonna come and whisper that she should go to bed. Claire isn’t ever going to check just one more time before she falls asleep and listen to her childhood lullabies and to the sounds of a baby calming down.

(And Catharine  _knew that)_

Lupo notices too, although, it takes Claire longer to realize that. It’s the way he puts his hand to her elbow when they have to climb something, like he knows she’ll put too much force behind each lift. Or the way he keeps sneaking more food to her, even though she doesn’t strictly need it. And all the times, when Claire’s fingers get twitchy and restless, that he asks if she would please carry Luna.

And Rosie still takes big weights off her. She doesn’t fight with Catharine as much. Claire’s not sure if she noticed, but she’s also not sure how much Rosie’s been doing for her while she’s been busy trying to breath around a headache. Rosie’s just always - there. Real. Not leaving. Keeping herself in Claire’s field of vision at all times.

And still Claire feels stupid, stupid, stupid. You can’t mourn someone who isn’t dead. You can’t wonder about their eyes and their hair and their first laughter. You can’t wish they’d play nice with the cats, or miss their warmth and their milk smell – what’s  _wrong_  with her? She can’t  _know_  what they’d have smelled like, ‘cause they didn’t even exist, not at all, not even a little bit.

Claire puts her hands to her flat belly and reminds herself. They didn’t even exist at all.

Then, one day.

One day, Claire sees them.

They have curls so wild they stick straight up, right to the sky. Shocking orange curls and a face so freckled their skin looks shades darker than hers. And they dislike pants so ever much, Claire lets them run around in their nappies and a warm tunic to keep out the chill. It flaps behind them as they chase Snowy in circles around the garden. Their laughter fills up the air like sweet summer.

And when they fall, oh, and Claire’s heart does unimaginable things in her chest, they just look up, around, around until their eyes meet. Claire orders herself calm. And they scramble to get up and run right to her, and Claire feels proud, so  _proud,_ that they go sprawling face-first again and just keep coming at her, never dithered, never bothered. And when their little arms go around her neck,  _oh,_  but they do smell like fresh milk, and sun, and— and warm bread and—

Claire wakes up and Marie is making toast.

And it comes washing out of her, a whole waterfall and then more, wrecking sobs that she can’t stop, no matter how much she tries. Catharine looks terrified and Lupo lost and the twins dry away her tears incessantly, because they just  _won’t_ _stop_. 

Claire wails. You can’t mourn someone that never even existed, but they did, oh,  _they did,_  they still  _do,_ and Claire misses them like someone has wretched her heart right out of her chest, leaving a hole in the shape of wild curls and freckles and a voice calling from across the garden:  _Mama! Mama, come see!_

Catherine holds her and Claire let’s her, let’s her because she can’t imagine a voice she’s never heard, so all it sounds like in her head is her very own voice.

It’s nightfall before Claire manages to calm down. A whole day of travel lost, but no one mentions it.

She pretends to be asleep. The others pretend to believe it.

As the night goes on, the rest of them sleep for real, but Claire’s eyes remain wild open, Grimm and Snowy and even Luna curled in her arms, so very precious and so very much not the same. 

Claire’s afraid she’ll never sleep again, and then - someone’s hand falls on her arm.

“Claire,” a voice whispers, low and gentle. “Claire. Can you get up for a minute?”

“Marie?” Claire says, her voice scratchy, shifting in her sleeping bag. It’s Marie indeed, holding a small package in the crook of one arm, hair free and lose around her shoulders. Claire sits up. “What is it?”

“Come here,” Marie tells her, reaching for her hand. Dazed, bones achy, Claire lets the cats and Luna hop down from her lap, and then lets Marie pull her upright.

She follows her without question, both because she’s tired, and because it’s Marie. They pad quietly to the edge of the river, not the same as the one they’d left polluted and hissing weeks ago. Marie kneels down on its shore, and tugs Claire with her. Then she unwraps her mysterious package.

“I thought,” she says, almost shy, offering it up to Claire like a gift. “You might want to say goodbye properly.”

Claire blinks at her, then slowly looks down, seeing things through a haze of exhaustion. Nestled in Marie’s hands, there’s a little boat made out of tree bark; an unlit candle inside of it; and her diary. Claire blinks again. “What…?”

“You know,” Marie insists. “I know we don’t have… well, we never did… I just thought.” She bits her lips, looks down, cheeks going pink. “I just thought it could help if you told them goodbye in a way. Because you never got to. And I, I thought, maybe, instead of burying it, you’d prefer, huh. This.” She offers the little boat again. “Sending them off.”

With the  _clink_  of a pin falling, Claire understands what she means. Her heart sinks. Her hands fret. She thinks she won’t be able to do that, ever, for how could she send them away when she aches for them every minute of every day?

But there’s nothing inside of her now but magic and hurt, and she’s already lost them to the water. They shouldn’t have to go without a goodbye.

Fresh tears spill out of her eyes, so Claire just nods, chokes, then reaches for the package. Marie passes it to her like a baby bird.

The diary, though. Claire can’t bear to be parted from it, so she does something else. “Do you have a knife?” she asks Marie.

Marie does, and she hands it over in silence. Claire looks for the curliest strand of her hair, even though it’s not nearly curly enough, and holds it tight in her hand. A single swipe does it.

It looks dark at night, but Claire knows its true color in the sun.

She rips a page off her diary and picks up the pen between shaky fingers. Her eyes shut tight. For a moment is all she can do to sit there, but then Marie reaches out and folds her hand over hers, and Claire starts writing, one painstaking letter at a time.

The strand of hair is tucked safely inside the folded page. It doesn’t say much. But Claire hopes it says enough.

“Do you want me to light it?” Marie whispers, pulling out a single match. Claire shakes her head no and reaches for it.

The candle sticks to the little boat. Its warmth is faint and barely reaches Claire’s cheeks, nothing but a pale reminder of a dream. She tucks the paper besides it, and lowers them all into the chilly water, the boat cupped between her palms.

She wavers.

“Maybe—” Her throat feels tight and dusty, so Claire swallows and tries again. “Maybe we could… sing something.”

Marie nods, but she looks unsure. Claire gets it – what  _could_  they sing, exactly?

She thinks, maybe, a lullaby – but all the ones she knows come in Catharine’s voice, and it’s too painful, to think she was never meant to  _hear them,_ much less sing them.

So Claire searches for other songs, and they come to them in a myriad of voices. Rosie and Marie and Oscar and Jackson and Olga and even Mother Yolanda. They come echoing back from the abbey’s distant walls. That’s also, Claire thinks, the music of her childhood. There’s home in them. Comfort. Old warmth.

Her limps fumble around the worn, tender words.

 _“Silent night, holy night,”_ Claire sings, every word burning her chest and her throat and her heart.  _“All is calm, all is bright.”_

 _“Round yon virgin, mother and child,”_ Marie joins in, louder and firmer, yet gentle, gentle, gentle like the flickering flame.  _“Holy infant, tender and mild—”_

_“Sleep in heavenly peace.”_

_“Sleep in heavenly peace.”_

Marie’s hand at her elbow, and the last note still at her lips, Claire gently nudges the boat away. It goes bobbling and spiraling down the current. They sit there and watch it get smaller and smaller, further and further away – until the light of it disappears behind the horizon.

A single flower blooms in Claire’s horns. Shockingly orange and twisting around itself like a rope. That one, Claire doesn’t send away.

She keeps it.


End file.
